“It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time ... time is an abstraction at which we arrive by means of the changes of things; made because we are not restricted to any one definite measure, all being interconnected.” - Ernst Mach

Barbour:

“Unlike the Emperor dressed in nothing, time is ‘nothing’ dressed in clothes. I can only describe the clothes.

Intervals of time do not pre-exist but are created by what the universe does.

As Newton himself defines it, absolute time is by no means independent of the world; it is a specific motion, the rotation of the earth.

If nothing happened, if nothing changed, then time would stop. For time is nothing but change. It is change that we perceive occurring all around us, not time. Put simply, time does not exist.

Vedic view- Subhash KakTime; · Infinite consciousness held in itself the notion of a unit of time equal to one-millionth of the twinkling of an eye: and from this evolved the timescale right upto an epoch consisting of several revolutions of the four ages, which is the life-span of one cosmic creation. Infinite consciousness itself is uninvolved in these, for it is devoid of rising and setting (which are essential to all time-scales), and it devoid of a beginning, middle and end.Space · There are three types of space—the psychological space, the physical space and the infinite space of consciousness. The infinite space of undivided consciousness is that which exists in all, inside and outside... The finite space of divided consciousness is that which created divisions of time, which pervades all beings... The physical space is that in which the elements exist. The latter two are not independent of the first.

Quantum View

Quantum theory tells us that physical processes occur in discrete, quantized steps, or levels. The laws that govern the quantum differ strangely from the predictable reality of our everyday "classical" world. At small scales, and sometimes at large scales, the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics reign. For example, atoms and subatomic quantum particles can exist in two or more states or places simultaneously, more like waves than particles, and existing as multiple coexisting possibilities known as quantum superposition, governed by a quantum wave function. Another quantum property is "nonlocal entanglement," in which components of a spatially separated system remain unified and connected(Penrose 1989).

Penrose defined OR self-collapse of superpositions (due to separations in space-time geometry) and moments of consciousness by E = ђ/t. E is the gravitational self-energy of an object (or its equivalent space-time geometry) separated from itself.ђis Planck's constant (over 2π) andtis the time at which OR occurs.Emay be calculated based on factors including (1) the object's mass, (2) the level at which the object separates from itself, i.e., its entire mass, individual atoms, atomic nuclei, or subatomic particles, and (3) the spatial separation distance, how far the object, or its space-time geometry separates from itself.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble made the landmark observation that wherever you look, distant galaxies are moving rapidly away from us. In other words, the universe is expanding. This means that at earlier times objects would have been closer together. In fact, it seemed that there was a time, about ten or twenty thousand million years ago, when they were all at exactly the same place and when, therefore, the density of the universe was infinite.

The light that we see from distant galaxies left them millions of years ago, and in the case of the most distant object that we have seen, the light left some eight thousand million years ago. Thus, when we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past.

British mathematician and physicist, Roger Penrose, in 1965, using the way light cones behave in general relativity, together with the fact that gravity is always attractive, he showed that a star collapsing under its own gravity is trapped in a region whose surface eventually shrinks to zero size. And, since the surface of the region shrinks to zero, so too must its volume. All the matter in the star will be compressed into a region of zero volume, so the density of matter and the curvature of space-time become infinite. In other words, one has a singularity contained within a region of space-time known as ablack hole.

Ramana Maharishi; Visitor: Which time is most suitable for meditation? Ramana: What is time? Visitor: Tell me what it is! Ramana: Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality. Whatever you think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc. Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge. But some of these rules and discipline are good for beginners.

J.Krishnamurti.

Time is a very strange phenomenon. Space and time are one; the one is not without the other. Time to us is extraordinarily important, and each one gives to it his own particular significance. Time to the savage has hardly any meaning, but to the civilized it is of immense significance. The savage forgets from day to day; but if the educated man did that, he would be put in an asylum or would lose his job. To a scientist, time is one thing; to a layman, it is another. To an historian, time is the study of the past; to a man on the stock market, it is the ticker; to a mother, it is the memory of her son; to an exhausted man, it is rest in the shade. Each one translates it according to his particular needs and satisfactions, shaping it to suit his own cunning mind. Yet we cannot do without time. If we are to live at all, chronological time is as essential as the seasons. But is there psychological time, or is it merely a deceptive convenience of the mind? Surely, there is only chronological time, and all else is deception. There is time to grow and time to die, time to sow and time to reap; but is not psychological time, the process of becoming, utterly false? ``What is time to you? Do you think of time? Are you aware of time? ''

Is not thought the product of time? Knowledge is the continuation of time. Time is continuation. Experience is knowledge, and time is the continuation of experience as memory. Time as continuation is an abstraction, and speculation is ignorance. Experience is memory, the mind. The mind is the machine of time. The mind is the past. Thought is ever of the past; the past is the continuation of knowledge. Knowledge is ever of the past; knowledge is never out of time, but always in time and of time. This continuation of memory, knowledge, is consciousness. Experience is always in the past; it is the past. This past in conjunction with the present is moving to the future; the future is the past, modified perhaps, but still the past. This whole process is thought, the mind. Thought cannot function in any field other than that of time. Thought may speculate upon the timeless, but it will be its own projection. All speculation is ignorance. ``Then why do you even mention the timeless? Can the timeless ever be known? Can it ever be recognized as the timeless?''